Monday, November 21, 2016

By Eric Sherman

According to the Department of Education, “each public school child who
receives special education and related services must have an Individualized
Education Program (IEP). Each IEP must be designed for one student and must be
a truly individualized document.

To create an effective
IEP, parents, teachers, other school staff--and often the student--must come
together to look closely at the student's unique needs. These individuals pool
knowledge, experience and commitment to design an educational program that will
help the student be involved in, and progress in, the general curriculum. The
IEP guides the delivery of special education supports and services for the
student with a disability. Without a doubt, writing--and implementing--an
effective IEP requires teamwork.”

If the IEP is designed
to be a collaborative process, why are parents always fighting for their child
to receive appropriate services or school placement?

We have learned over the
years it doesn’t matter what the IEP team recommends, it comes down to what the
school or the District wants to offer and the parent agreeing or disagreeing
with the offer.

The first time we were
hit with this reality was when we were requesting more speech for our son in a very
contentious IEP meeting over speech services. Our son has bilateral
cochlear implants and is on the autism spectrum. His co-occurring
disability poses a lot of challenges, so we argued our facts and reasons why
more speech was needed. The speech therapist, who never worked with our son or
had conducted an assessment, explained to us that our son was being offered the
same amount of speech as all the other students receive. Needless to say,
we jumped on the statement claiming the IEP was not individualized to our son,
but predetermined by the District. The school district agreed to the additional
speech hours, but has been trying to change our son’s speech services in every
IEP since.

We have found over the
years, our IEP teams have not always been made up of knowledgeable school
personnel looking to develop an educational program that is individualized to
our son’s needs. We’ve had to fight school administrators, who’ve never met our
son or lack any understanding about his disabilities as well as school service
providers, who’ve never worked with our son, then write IEP goals and suggest
inappropriate services. We’ve even had school placement offered to us,
when no one on the IEP team even knew anything about the program being offered.

For the most part,
schools and school districts will do their best to create an IEP for a child
with special needs within the bounds of their budgets, personnel, services and
programs they have available. But
individualizing a program outside those limits becomes a real fight for
parents.

If an educational
program is to be truly individualized to the student’s needs as the law
intends, those on the IEP team (including parents) need to be fully
knowledgeable and have a good understanding of the student’s disability and
their needs. It is imperative for the IEP team to know about all available
services and school programs that appropriately address the student’s
individual need without prejudice.

As long as schools
districts consider limits on what they can offer students with disabilities,
the “I” in IEP will always be hard to define. Parents have to be
knowledgeable advocates for their child to make sure the "I" means
individual.

Please feel free to leave a
question or comment about your child’s IEP and we will be happy to
respond. The more parents share, the better prepared we are to help our
children with special needs.